Sync Hacks is a column dedicated to exploring new applications for BitTorrent Sync, as built by users like you. BitTorrent Sync is a free, unlimited, secure file-syncing app. (And now, it’s 2X faster.) If you’ve got an epic Sync idea, use-case or how-to, shoot us an email at sync[at]bittorrent.com.

Nilenso is an employee-owned software cooperative based out of Bangalore, India. They ship beautiful, fully-tested applications for you everyday. Two developers on the team: Timothy Andrew and Asif Kalam, let us know how they’ve been using BitTorrent Sync to safely and securely share project files among developers, without the headache or risk of email.

From Timothy Andrew:

At Nilenso, I’ve worked on a suite of web/mobile apps for a non-profit as well as a hosted, private wikis for teams. Asif consults on Rails projects. He’s helped build a private social network and a virtual phone system.

Asif and I have been using BitTorrent Sync for one of our consulting projects here. The week we started this project, we had a private key (for a third-party service), which we wanted to keep on both our computers. We didn’t trust Dropbox (or email, for that matter) to share the key. So, enter BitTorrent Sync. We downloaded it and it worked beautifully! We were able to easily and quickly have both keys on our computer, without saving the key on somebody else’s cloud.

Since then, we’ve been using BitTorrent Sync for all sorts of things, from a share project TODO list, to database dumps and even keeping old server logs. Our client sends us sample data using BitTorrent Sync. It works really well, is secure and moves data quickly. I’m sure we’ll find even more uses for it soon.

So, if you’ve been stuck sending files to your teammates using email, you should definitely give BitTorrent Sync a try! Its a great way to share sensitive or private files with your team without managing the mental overhead of making sure everyone has the latest copy of something. It works pretty seamlessly once you’ve gotten it set up. I’ll walk you through set up:

Setup

On The First Machine

1. Download and install BitTorrent Sync
2. Open the application.
3. In the Folders tab, click the plus (+) sign at the bottom.

4. In the window that pops up, click Generate to create a new secret, and also select a folder you want to keep synced. Warning: Anyone who knows this shared secret can access all the files in your shared folder. Keep it safe!
5. Click Ok. Your folder is now ready to be shared to another computer. Add some files to it if it is empty.

On The Second/Third/etc. Machine

1. On other machines that want to access your folder: download, install and open BitTorrent Sync
2. Click the plus (+) sign in the Folders tab.
3. This time, instead of Generating a key, paste the same key that was generated from the first machine.
4. Select a new folder to receive files into, and click Ok.
5. Wait for a bit (BitTorrent Sync only syncs when two peers are online at the same time), and the files you added to the first machine should appear in your folder.

This is a two-way sync, so any files you add/modify/delete in the synced folder will be reflected in all connected machines. And that’s it!